Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty review: Naveen Polishetty’s trademark comedy is pleasantly entertaining

What makes Naveen Polishetty stand out from others? His humour or his knack for writing hilarious comedy? His appetite for dishing out good films shows his hunger, and not falling for cravings is his strength.

Naveen’s debut as a protagonist in Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya (2019) and his outstanding comic timing in Jathi Ratnalu (2021) — a smashing hit — make him distinctly dissimilar from others.

Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty is about Anvita (Anushka Shetty), an unyielding personality who is rather unbending and inflexible when it comes to accepting relations because of her past experiences in life.

To break the state of social isolation, she wants to have a child. Thus, she makes a decision to have a child via a sperm donor.

Subsequently, she spots Siddhu (Naveen Polishetty) who seems to her eyes a charming, free-spirited jovial young man. Would he accept her proposal to have a child? — is the basic plot as they go a few paces further in their lives.

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Analysis

Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty chugs off on the lines of relationship drama where the story depends entirely on humour.

Director P Mahesh Babu selects standup comedy as the theme to kickstart the narrative.

The story doesn’t make a flying start. It takes its time to slowly establish the characters — the version of Anvita breaking free from the pressure trap, dodging the challenges, limitations and societal pressures, and how a woman of grit moves ahead with her weird idea to have a baby without marriage.

As Anvita goes through a flurry of emotions, the curiosity builds up only when Siddhu enters the scene.

Starting with a few cliched-looking punchlines, the humour sets in smoothly as Anvita and the audience start to enjoy the jokes.

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A fresh take

Freshness in filmmaking isn’t something you work out hard, sitting on the script wracking your head. It should be crafted with ease.

Luckily, Naveen mastered it, or you might wonder if he genetically inherited the art of manifesting hilarious comedy.

The aspect of standup comedy is not a much-favoured theme for filmmakers, at least for Telugu cinema. It wasn’t tried before. Not with the term “standup comedy” although you might find references from old films where a person on stage makes audiences laugh with his silly satires.

But Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty entirely depicts a different social setting and context. However, you might find a few scenes with an overdose of humour, too much to settle comfortably.

Naveen Polishetty and Anushka Shetty, both make unusually odd personalities on the screen. However weak their chemistry may seem, the humour in the foreground shields this defect of absurd casting.

The second half is rather dramatised and again, the standup comedy is brought back to continue the pace of the story.

Although the filmmaker’s job is to give a rational and sensible ending to a story, here, the director doesn’t take the usual route of bringing logic to the brains, nor does he want the ending to be unpredictable. He keeps it organic and executed neatly.

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Performances

Naveen gave a clinical performance with his humour. Words really don’t suffice to explain an electrically charged young man (Siddhu).

Anushka Shetty does her part well as Anvita.

Veteran actors Jayasudha and Murali Sharma did a neat job.

Abhinav Gomatam chipped in well. He found the right footing after making a few oddball characters in his previous films like Nikhil’s Spy (2023) and Gandeevadhari Arjuna (2023).

Verdict

Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty is a proper urban story of two individuals with diametrically opposite personalities who venture out by clutching their aspirations to their hearts. How their story ends is fun to watch on the screen.

(Views expressed here are personal.)